@DavidGil, thanks for setting me straight on the multiple points where I’d misunderstood you. I agree that the author’s gender, race, and sexuality are no bar to writing protagonists of a different g/r/s, as long as the author has the imaginative sympathy to get into someone else’s circumstances and (crucially) the willingness to listen when people feed back on what rings true and false. Without the latter, you get issues like women POV characters who are always thinking about their own and others’ breasts.
I remember now that authorial control is something you’ve always emphasized as being utterly vital. Interactive Fiction tends to involve letting go of a measure of that control. Personally, rather than fighting that, I lean into it; I think the shared authorship of writer and reader is a distinctive strength of the genre. That’s a bit off-topic here but would be worth its own discussion.
At the end of the day, one can write for HG without writing for the forums, and I hope you do. I appreciated the things you discussed in your first draft, and hope we get the chance to talk about them on some other thread.
@LewisGraham, I didn’t ignore what you said about encroaching on the rights of others; I specifically addressed it in both my posts. No amount of telling an author what they should write encroaches on their creative freedom, unless you’re their publisher, their patron, the government, or a crazy “Misery”-style fan who has them chained up in a cabin. Attempts to influence (as distinct from coerce) people are not an encroachment on anyone’s (moral or legal) rights; rather, they’re a characteristic of any genuinely free society, on any scale.
You say that people should have total freedom to criticize a work, unless it takes the form of “trying to influence writers by telling them they should or shouldn’t write something.” And about that you didn’t just use the word “can’t”–you said people had “no right” to tell authors what they should/shouldn’t write, and that it’s an encroachment on creative freedom.
Using that kind of language erodes freedom of expression, and thus creative freedom…so maybe you should be more careful about using it (especially if you don’t mean it literally). I’d be making the same kinds of points if someone had said, “I totally believe in freedom of the press, but people have no right to print deeply offensive material,” or “I believe in freedom of religion/philosophy as long as people don’t try to influence each other’s beliefs.” We should try to avoid framing other people using their freedoms as an erosion of our freedoms.
I’d like the forums to stay a place where people do seek to influence each other’s writing, and authors like me don’t get over-sensitive about it. In terms of how to effectively influence authors, I broadly agree with @Jacic’s comments about catching more flies with honey than vinegar, but I’ve also learned from some decidedly vinegary reviews myself.
Finally, it’s a bit of a tangent, but on speech v expression: freedom of expression is unquestionably the more fundamental human right, both internationally and under US law. That’s why the First Amendment protects not just verbal utterance or writing but art (painting, sculpture), flag burning, and (post-Citizens United) donations to political parties. It certainly covers everything we’re discussing here.
Absolutely.